Hacker News Reader

Comment by Xixi | Hacker News Reader

“This is the first 3D printing tech that really has the potential to break out of the prototyping realm that 3D printing has been relegated to until now”

Nope. 3D printing has been there for quite a while already: it is being used quite massively in the aerospace industry, and not for prototyping...

View on HN

SpaceX prints parts of their engines too.

http://www.spacex.com/news/2014/07/31/spacex-launches-3d-pri...

Many think of 3D printing taking over low-cost high-volume production. In that area there are real economic and tech hurdles. But, the niche of 3d printing in the aerospace industry (or any low volume, high-cost, high-complexity parts) is akin to Tesla first building the Roadster in a high-margin, high-performance auto market before trying to expand out to more general markets. It's a good sign, and moving from prototyping shapes to some form of printing for actual part use is the most interesting aspect of the maturing of 3d printing.

Another example: http://www.geaviation.com/company/additive-manufacturing.htm...

I don't think it's ever going to compete with injection molding on a cost basis.

Edit: That is, where injection molding is applicable today. 3D printers do fill a niche for low-volume runs.

If you stack it up against the just the manufacturing step, I agree completely. But in certain niches, if you compare against the manufacture, transport, inventory, logistics costs etc, then maybe there's a few more areas where 3d printing may be an advantage. If you can actually print structurally usable parts on demand, why dedicate a longer more complex logistics chain. e.g. is there a trade to be made between carrying a network of warehouses full of parts and a printer with a database of those parts right near the consumption point?

In all practicality, you can only do this with a very narrow range of parts, even if you could get direct finished looking structural parts out of a 3D printer (which right now, many times you can't exactly ...).

examples / links?

"The Boeing company has been utilizing SLS for flight hardware in regular production since 2002, for both military and commercial programs"

http://www.naefrontiers.org/File.aspx?id=31590

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-07/12/3d-printed-pl... "Airbus plans to have 3D printed components in the cabins of its A380s by the end of 2012. Its Eurofighter Typhoon military jet already has some internal 3D printed components."

Of course, those might be comparatively boring parts, like radio covers and plastic ducting. You won't be able to 3D print a working jet fighter in your garage for at least 5 years, maybe more :)

Those are also low-value, low-volume parts. 3D printing works for minor components when you are only building a couple of hundred planes a year, but the 3D parts themselves have almost no value whatsoever compared to the final product.

Over 1,000 parts of the A350XWB are 3d printed using a specific resin (called ULTEM 9085) with interesting properties for the purpose of building an airliner: it's light, strong, and FST (flame, smoke, and toxicity) compliant. [1]

Replying to another post, it might not be very high volume, but it certainly isn't prototyping: it's in production in a very heavily regulated sector. More impressive to me than mass producing for example 10,000,000 key holders a month.

[1] http://3dprint.com/63169/airbus-a350-xwb-3d-print/

GE Aviation has already pushed selective laser sintering – a form of 3D printing – further than anyone else, announcing on 15 July that a factory in Alabama will be the first to mass-produce jet engine parts using an additive manufacturing process.

That factory will build fuel nozzles for the CFM Leap-1, which combines a core made by GE and a low-pressure section from Snecma. GE is now evaluating a different 3D printing process to build LPT blades for the GE9X – the engine selected to power the Boeing 777X, and the engine maker’s most complex propulsion system yet.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/analysis-ge-ponder...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com